editor's review

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You may very well think that the countryside is still the place where people work the fields with their bare hands and technology is but a far away sound, except for occasional tractor, but you’d be surprised of how high-tech farms have become in the last few decades. Almost everything is automated and a single man can handle an entire farm by himself, if he’s got the proper machinery.

Buy lands, cultivate crops and sell your harvest

Professional Farmer 2014 provides you with a chance to experience life beyond the concrete jungle and see whether it would suit you well, as well as whether you were cut out to be a farmer in the first place. There is no central plot or a story you must follow, just the usual routine that comes and ends with every season, depending on what you cultivate.

In essence, the main purpose is for you to take care of the crops during their entire life cycle, starting from the moment you plant the seeds, all the way to the market where you sell the harvest in exchange for money. With the cash you manage to make, new machinery and more land can be bought, which in turn provides you with more money at the next harvest. Obviously, it gets boring after a while, but you are not meant to take it too seriously anyway.

Beautiful scenery, yet a total lack of actual content

You would be much better off if you go into the game to relax a bit and just wander about the beautiful landscapes that were created for the game, rather than try to play it as it was meant to be played. There are very few things you can do and enjoy if you decide to follow the scenarios, since the number of vehicles is quite limited and the missions themselves are incredibly slow and tedious.

In addition, there are some optimization issues that cause the game to lag quite a bit and you may stumble into weird frame rate problems along the way. However, you could live with the frame drops, but the dead environments and the slow pace of the action usually make the gameplay impossible to bear. On the other hand, at least the graphics engine is very good-looking, although it just might be the cause for all the hang-ups.

Try to relax and have some fun, despite the mishaps

All things considered, Professional Farmer 2014 had some few ideas and a nice starting point for something much greater, but it decided to stop half way through and demand money for an unfinished product. Hence, unless you do not mind paying for something unfinished, the exploration part is worth it and you can definitely relax by wandering around the farm lands.